Italian Languages

In Lombardy, Venetians
tried to change language without success. They had instead success when they changed Dalmatian language in Venetian in costal Dalmatia.
//
Dalmatian is a dead language, what success is that?
Standard Italian (lingua toscana in bocca romana) is cofficial in Istria and learned at schools, not Venetian, not Milanese, but lingua toscana in bocca romana (Think Tg1 della Rai)

Dalmatian is a dead language, what success is that?
Standard Italian (lingua toscana in bocca romana) is cofficial in Istria and learned at schools, not Venetian, not Milanese, but lingua toscana in bocca romana (Think Tg1 della Rai)


Well. obviously that is the case today.

But at the height of the Serenísima's power in the Adriatic, it was Venetian that was used there.

It is ''Serenissima'' joolsey, not ''Serenísima'': this sounds spanish (for God's Sake Venice was not).

"lingua toscana in bocca romana"

Ah, è tornato il coglionazzo nazionalista.

?

''Lingua toscana in bocca romana'' is an abstract periphrasis heard only outside Italy and useful only to foreigners to let them theorize about the Italian language.
Real standard Italian, the one you hear from ''TG1 della RAI'', for instance, have NOthing in common with the roman slang and accent.

Why is 'lingua toscana' used to refer to the Italian language? I mean, although it is based on the Tuscan dialect, is it not still a semi-artificial language with regional influence?

Real standard Italian, the one you hear from ''TG1 della RAI'', for instance, have NOthing in common with the roman slang and accent.
//
1. Phonetic similarity between the Roman accent and standard Italian is 99%
2. Roman dialect (Romanesco) is rarely used by people born in Rome, it is used by people born in the surrounding region (which belongs to Lazio, but the accent is different, for exemple: insième in Florence and Rome, but insiéme in laziale and romanesco).
3. you are confusing dialect with accent (accento romano: dialetto romano/romanesco), and in the case of Rome there is a sharp contrast between the two accents(accento romano: accento laziale)
In the case of Milanese both are incorrect (accento milanese as well as dialetto milanese) when to compared to ''lingua toscana in bocca romana''

@ reality.

It is ''Serenissima'' joolsey, not ''Serenísima'': this sounds spanish (for God's Sake Venice was not).

No, I was writing it in Venetian, which unlike Italian does not employ double consonants (unless they are digraphs)

Off course I am aware that Italian uses -ss- for intervocalic voiceless s!

Venetian and Spanish share striking similarities . For example:

Venetian , Spanish negro ; Italian nero

Venetian, Spanish calle; Italian via

@ Franco

you're right.

Not only that, but another similarity is that Venetian employs that distinctive Iberian alveolar fricative 's' (whistling to English ears as opposed to the more liquid 's' of Italian) for the letter 'x'

And, whilst not as staccato as Spanish in its rhythm, Venetian is nowhere near as melodious as Italian.

I thought Venetian did not have an official standardised ortography?

@ Emmanuel

<<I thought Venetian did not have an official standardised ortography?>>

The trouble is, and this is analagous to the situation between the Lombard langauge(s); there are standards, at least two prominent ones...but which ones should be accepted as THE standard?

For example; look at Occitan...we have two written norms: Mistralian and Classical. The problem here is that Mistral was writing with emphasis on his Provençal variant, and since he earned great prestige,, people came to think of Provençal as the standard form of Occitan, or at least the most widely diffused one with Languedocian, Gasconian, Limousine variants etc. being peripheral variants. But technically, Provence was on the eastern perohpery of the group, whereas Tolouse and Languedoician was more centric to the entire zone. But this reflects a reality of linguistic evolution: the central dialect, even the most widely-spoken one does not necessarily become the standard form; this comes about through cultural phenomena.

In the case of Venetian, there appears to be one standard which politically is more suited to the unity and integrity of the region, namely centred on a zone spanning most of Padua, Vicenza and Rovigo (i.e. it rests most of its norms on a variety which conveniently happens to be geographically equidistant between all the Venetian regions). But then, there is the standard based on the coast in and around the lagoon of Venice which holds greater appeal to those northern and eastern speakers as (i) it permits certain phonemes which are unique to their dialectal zones but not others; For example 'zh' or 'ç' to represent the Castilian-sounding 'ceceo' (English 'th') in parts of Belluno and Treviso (Northern-Central variant) and (ii) it reflects a legacy of the maritime power of Venice in the Adriatic, during a time when the City of Venice would have been the capital and the prime instigator of colonising and trading with the Istrian and Balkan areas.

Ultimately, the codification of a literary language as standard always entails some degree of synthesis and artificiality, and this is necessarily so. For example, look at Dante's upper-class Florentine dialect which he then mixed with Sicilian cadences: when did the average 13th century Florentine iron-monger or butcher enjoy the opportunity of coming across a Sicilian in his lifetime?

Therefore, I hardly think it befits the language to choose either based on presitige (based on the historical and expansionary power of the capital) or else common denominator (which involves compromise and so some people will never be happy that their local variant is not completely facilitated).

@ Emmanuel

Furthermore,

I believe that this 'artificial' Central Venetian variety (based on Padua, Vicenza and Rovigo) is the work of modern-day Venetian intellectuals and lobby groups who devised this as "GVU" (Grafia Vèneta Unitaria). In a way it is admirable, since it clearly tries to appeal to all Venetian dialects without isolating too many speakers and disowning their local features from acceptance.

But in another way, it does have that feel of not possessing historical validity, whereas Traditional Venetian orthography had so until the dawn of the 19th century.

Traditional Venetian norm was unapologetically centred on the lagoon, quite logically, since that's where most of the Serene Republic's educated and influential people were based. Venetian writers such as Marin Sanudo, Carlo Galdono (Casanova even translated the Illiad into Venetian) probably would not have cared much for sensitively incorporating the norms of Trevigian or Vicenzan dialect into their written texts; after all, would Dante have been troubled about incorporating certain speech features from Pisan and Siena dialects into his Florentine works?

Here are some distinctive features of Traditional Venetian orthography; as in 'distinctive' from Italian. (remember; these would have represented most though not all the sounds across Venetian, given the dialectal peculiarities in certain zones). I will then illustrate how the more recent (Italian-based) orthographies have caused confusion as per etymology and consistency.

- /z/: represented a curious sound, kind of like the Castilian 's' only voiced; so like 's' in Castilian "deSde": this generally appeared in words which would have been rendered 'ge-/gi-' in Italian: eg "zente" for Italian "gente", "Zorzi" for Italian "Giorgio". Two of the three Italian forms of 'z': voiced alveolar fricative [dz] (as in Zanzaro) and unvoiced [ts] (as in pizza) were not represented in Venetian, indicating that either they did not exist in the spoken form of coastal Venetian, or that one or both these sounds did exist in peripheral dialects but were considered too marginal for purposes of the written standard.

- /j/: on the other hand, the Italian 'gi-/ge-' sound [dʒ] was present in Venetian but represented by this 'j' in words like 'justare' (Italian 'aggiustare').

- /c/. Like Italian it is hard [k] before 'a', 'o', 'u' and when followed by 'h', and fricative [tʃ] when followed by 'i' or 'e'.
But what causes confusion is that the Venetian word form as in 'cesa' [tʃ] is opposed to the Italian form chiesa [k], which can lead to hypercorrection. So a Venetian speaker (if there were one who was not aware of Italian) learning written Italian might observe this contrast and then assume that all Italian words written 'chi-/che-' correspond to the sound [tʃ]!

-/s/ like the Italian word initial 's-' or intervocalic '-ss-' but in ALL positions (as per Spanish orthography); however it did represent [z] when placed before a voiced consonant as per in Italian; 'Smiderle'

-/x/ represented the phoneme [z] in word-initial position whereas Italian might use initial /Z-/ (although initial z in Italian is usually two different sounds as described above) or even /C' + i or e/.
Hence: "El Zenaro x'è mi amigo" for Italian "Gennaro c'è il mio amico".

What happened so that this Traditional Orthography went out of fashion, or has at least been overtaken by the new GVU standard?

This may have to do with the collapse of the Republic in 1797 and subsequent domination by France and Austria during the next six decades; robbed of its political independence and prestige, Venice now saw German and French become its chief diplomatic languages. Whilst Venetian had never risen to the point of challenging Italian as a lingua franca throughout the peninsula, it did nevertheless enjoy a more widespread appeal than comparable Gallo-Italic languages such as Piemontese, Ligurian and Lombard, since it was used commercially in dealings throughout the Adriatic. But now this international status (I say international insofar as it was used beyond the boundaries of its homeland) would slip away.

Clearly, wealthy young Venetians had already been learning to write and speak Italian long before the collapse of the Republic, but this tendency now intensified and extended to anyone who hoped to have dealings across the Italian peninsula (not to mention learning German and French for European interaction). It seems likely that when some of these young men did turn their attention back to their regional language, they proceded to write its forms using standard practice from the Italian orthography they had become accustomed to reading and writing in, hence the confusion over later attempts regarding double consonants and the like.

Wow, thanks for the information. :) Well, ortography changes from time to time for historical and political reasons, eg spelling reforms. Do you not think Venetian phonology has changed from the fall of the Republic? Personally, I think it makes more sense focusing on the more 'educated' variety of the language--in other words, the more conservative variety. For instance, look at the situation in Ireland: most people reject the An Caighdeán Oifigiúil. Why? It does not retain classical spelling so it could be 'easier' to learn and thus dialect-free. However, these 'educated' varieties also cause a diglossia, which only inhibits language diffusion and learning. I think Venetian ortography should reflect the 'educated' variety, but then again that is just my opinion. Even then Venetian has no official regulating body...

Out of all the varieties of Venetian, which one do you think is the most conservative, in your opinion?